Biology

The International Olympic Committee said Sunday it will begin testing for disease causing viruses in the sewage-polluted waters where athletes will compete in next year's Rio de Janeiro Games. Before, the IOC and local Olympic organizers in Rio said they would only test for bacteria in the water, as Brazil and virtually all nations only mandate such testing to determine the safety of recreational waters. But after an Associated Press investigation published last week revealed high counts of viruses directly linked to human sewage in the Olympic waters, the IOC reversed course after being advised by the World Health Organization (WHO) that it should expand its testing. "The...

Related "Biology" Articles

The International Olympic Committee said Sunday it will begin testing for disease causing viruses in the sewage-polluted waters where athletes will compete in next year's Rio de Janeiro Games.
Before, the IOC and local Olympic organizers in Rio said they...

A pair of endangered shorebirds have nested along a sandy beach in Lake County, raising hopes that their rare Illinois-born hatchlings will survive into adulthood and that the species' precarious prospects may be improving.
The small birds, called piping...

Athletes competing in next year's Summer Olympics here will be swimming and boating in waters so contaminated with human feces that they risk becoming violently ill and unable to compete in the games, an Associated Press investigation has found.
An AP...

More than 20 years of habitat restoration and breeding programs have helped the endangered Karner blue butterfly make a comeback in the pine barrens of upstate New York where it was discovered by Russian author Vladimir Nabokov decades ago.
"This...

Mountain lions used to roam most of the mainland United States. Their enormous range earned them many names puma, painter, catamount, cougar and made them the most widely distributed mammal in North America. The mountain lion was nearly lost to...

Five College of DuPage students are participating in prestigious summer chemistry research internships through the College Foundation's Resource for Excellence Grant program. Shyama Pandya of Naperville and Frank Giuliani of Wheaton are at Northwestern...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- A quick biological test may be able to identify children who have literacy challenges or learning disabilities long before they learn to read, according to new research from Northwestern University.
The study, published in the July...

A loud boom that knocked a Rhode Island beachgoer out of her chair is still a mystery days later, and with no evidence of an explosive device and few clues in the sand, investigators and scientists are wondering whether this was a bizarre case of nature...

College of DuPage students Sam Liesman and Colton Eakins are gaining invaluable real-world experiences while serving biophysics internships at the prestigious Illinois Institute of Technology this summer. Bolingbrook resident Sam Liesman is currently...

My recommended reading list for this summer includes 10 books with very different approaches to innovation. In some cases, these books take you inside the thought process of a top innovator, whether it’s a Silicon Valley entrepreneur (Elon Musk), a...

Fewer than 4,000 tigers roam across the Asian continent today, compared to about 100,000 a century ago. But researchers are proposing a new way to protect the big cats: redefine them.
The proposal, published this week in Science Advances, argues...

An abundance of rainfall in June is bringing an abundance of mosquitoes, Lake County Health Department officials are warning.
Floodwater mosquitoes thrive on rainfall, and as of June 28, 4.24 inches of rain have fallen in Waukegan compared to the month's...

A vast chunk of space rock crashes into the Yucatan Peninsula, darkening the sky with debris and condemning three quarters of Earth's species to extinction. A convergence of continents disrupts the circulation of the oceans, rendering them stagnant and...

There's a fair amount of good-humored debunking that's followed the most recent "Jurassic" release, including my favorite so far: A cost analysis of what it would take to run a dino park in real life, which comes out to about $23 billion...

Wildlife biologists with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources' Division of Fish & Wildlife say the Michigan black bear that walked into Indiana last week has turned west based on evidence collected over the weekend and reported sightings...

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett hates "the Rust Belt" as a moniker for the Great Lakes region — who likes rust? — so he's been pushing for a more apt nickname:
The Fresh Coast.
"That captures who we are, and it captures who Chicago is, and it...

A bear spotted wandering in northern Indiana is the state's first confirmed presence of a wild black bear in more than 140 years, state wildlife officials said Friday.
After the bear was spotted earlier this week in St. Joseph County in an area northwest...

About 20 species of butterflies can often be found often in area yards, but the endangered species scientists tried to introduce in Elgin still is not showing up.
The endangered swamp metalmark butterfly is vanishing nationwide because of its extremely...

It's like they hired Princeton Mom over there at Science magazine.
In a piece made famous for being both terrible advice and retracted, the magazine's Ask Alice columnist, virologist Alice Huang, counseled a postdoctoral student to grin and bear it...

Former College of DuPage student Vincent Scola is completing his master's degree in microbial ecology in the arid expanses of southern Africa's Namib Desert. Working with the Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics (CMEG) at the University of...